1558 Jan 7, The French, under
the Duke of Guise, finally took the port of Calais from the English.
(HN, 1/7/99)

1584 Jan 7, This was the last
day of the Julian calendar in Bohemia & Holy Roman empire. The
1582 Gregorian (or New World) calendar was adopted by this time in
Belgium, most of the German Roman Catholic states and the
Netherlands.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, Par p.27)(MC, 1/7/02)

1610 Jan 7, The astronomer
Galileo Galilei sighted four of Jupiter's moons. Galileo discovered
the 1st 3 Jupiter satellites, Io, Europa & Ganymede. He
discovered mountains and valleys on the moon, that Jupiter has a
moon of its own, and that the sun has spots which change. Galileo
discovered multiple moons around Jupiter. He also observed Mars.
(V.D.-H.K.p.200)(SFC, 11/5/96, p.A4)(SFC,
11/29/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/98)(MC, 1/7/02)

1714 Jan 7, A typewriter was
patented by Englishman Henry Mill. It was built years later.
(MC, 1/7/02)

1718 Jan 7, Israel Putnam,
American Revolutionary War hero, was born. He planned the
fortifications at the Battle of Bunker Hill and told his men, "don't
fire until you see the whites of their eyes."
(HN, 1/7/99)

1839 Jan 7, Louis Daguerre had
the influential astronomer Dominique-Francois-Argo make an
announcement at the Academy of Sciences in Paris of the
daguerreotype, a photographic process using fumes of iodine to
sensitize a silver plate, vapor of mercury to bring out the image,
and common salt to fix the image.
(ON, 10/08, p.9)

1845 Jan 7, Louis III (Ludwig
II), last King of Bavaria (1913-1918), was born at Nymphenburg. He
was also called the "Mad King" for his extravagant castles.
(HN, 1/7/99)(SFEC, 4/9/00, p.T4)(MC, 1/7/02)

1847 Jan 7, The California Star
in Yerba Buena was begun by 2 men a couple of months after the
Monterey Californian on the 2nd floor of a mule-powered grist mill
on what is now Clay St. It was started by Sam Brannan and was edited
by Dr. Elbert P. Jones.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, BR p.6)(PI, 8/8/98, p.5)

1894 Jan 7, One of the earliest
motion picture experiments took place at the Thomas Edison studio in
West Orange, N.J., as comedian Fred Ott was filmed sneezing.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1895 Jan 7, The new government
of Hawaii placed the country under martial law following news of a
planned revolt. Queen Lili’uokalani was convicted of treason and
sentenced to 5 years in prison. She was released after serving 2
years under house arrest.
(ON, 11/02, p.7)

1904 Jan 7, The Marconi
International Marine Communication Company, Limited, of London
announced that the telegraphed letters “C-Q-D" would serve as a
maritime distress call. It was later replaced by “S-O-S".
(AP, 1/7/07)

1910 Jan 7, Alain JG de
Rothschild, banker and baron, was born in France.
(MC, 1/7/02)

1911 Jan 7, Aviator James
Radley, operating a French Bleriot airplane, performed over South
San Francisco, skimmed the West Virginia, the flagship of
Rear-Admiral Barry, and checked the time of San Francisco Ferry
Tower clock on both sides.
(SSFC, 1/2/11, DB p.42)

1912 Jan 7, Charles Addams,
cartoonist whose macabre Addams Family appeared in The New Yorker,
was born.
(HN, 1/7/99)

1914 Jan 7, The first
ship crossed the Panama Canal.
(HFA, '96, p.22)

1918 Jan 7, The Germans moved
75,000 troops from the East Front to the Western Front.
(HN, 1/7/99)

1927 Jan 7, Commercial
transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and
London.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1928 Jan 7, William Peter
Blatty, author and director (The Exorcist), was born in NYC.
(MC, 1/7/02)

1934 Jan 7, The Radio Church of
God under Herbert W. Armstrong began broadcasting in Pasadena, Ca.
His program was called "The World Tomorrow" and his magazine was
called "The Plain Truth."
(WSJ, 2/120/00, p.A1)
1934 Jan 7, Six-thousand
pastors in Berlin defied the Nazis insisting that they will not be
muzzled.
(HN, 1/7/99)

1939 Jan 7, Tom Mooney
(1882-1942), California imprisoned labor leader, was pardoned by
newly elected Democratic Governor Culbert Olson (1876-1962). Mooney
had been convicted and imprisoned for over 22 years for the SF
Preparedness Day Bombing of 1916.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mooney)(www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/olson/)

1942 Jan 7, Vasili Alexeyev,
weightlifter (Olympic-gold-72, 76), was born in USSR.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1942 Jan 7, The World War II
siege of Bataan began in the Philippines.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1943 Jan 7, Nicola Tesla
(b.1856), Croatian born inventor and physicist, died In NYC. In 1996
Marc Seifer authored “Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla:
Biography of a Genius."
(SFC, 12/29/96, Z1
p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla)(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)

1944 Jan 7, The U.S. Air Force
announced the production of the first jet-fighter, Bell P-59
Airacomet.
(HN, 1/7/99)

1945 Jan 7, U.S. air ace Major
Thomas B. McGuire Jr. was killed in the Pacific.
(HN, 1/7/99)

1952 Jan 7, French forces in
Indochina launch Operation Violette in an effort to push Viet Minh
forces away from the town of Ba Vi.
(HN, 1/7/00)

1953 Jan 7, President Truman
announced in his State of the Union address that the United States
had developed a hydrogen bomb.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1955 Jan 7, Singer Marian
Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in
Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera." She was the first black singer to
perform there.
(WSJ, 2/28/97, p.A14)(AP, 1/7/98)(HN, 1/7/99)
1955 Jan 7, The opening of the
Canadian Parliament in Ottawa was televised for the first time.
(AP, 1/7/05)

1972 Jan 7, Lewis F. Powell
Jr., private practice lawyer, and William H. Rehnquist (1925-2005),
Assistant Attorney General for Pres. Nixon, were sworn in as the
99th and 100th members of the Supreme Court.
(AP, 1/7/98)(AP, 9/4/05)
1972 Jan 7, Poet John Berryman
(b.1914), US poet (Imaginary Jew), leaped to his death from a bridge
above the Mississippi River. He was teaching a graduate course at
the Univ. of Minnesota on America’s character as revealed by its
poets. Carl Rakosi took over the class. His former wife, Eileen
Simpson, died in 2002. Simpson authored her memoir "Poets in Their
Youth" in 1982.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berryman)(SFEC, 4/23/00, BR
p.1)(SFC, 10/26/02, p.A24)

1978 Jan 7, Michael Josselson
(b.1908), Estonia-born director of the Congress for Cultural
Freedom, died. The organization was a CIA front to gain the support
of the non-Communist left for the US. In 2000 Frances Stonor
Saunders authored "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of
Arts and Letters."
(SFEC, 7/16/00, BR p.4)

1979 Jan 7, The Vietnamese army
captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh overthrowing the Khmer
Rouge government. The People’s Party, a Hanoi installed Khmer Rouge
faction, took power with Hun Sen as prime minister and Heng Samrin
as president. This finally ended the mass genocide depicted in the
1984 film "The Killing Fields." The Khmer Rouge retreated into
sanctuaries along the Thai border, set up bases and picked up
support from Thailand and China.
(WSJ, 2/27/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 6/14/97, p.A15)(WSJ,
5/3/96, p.A-10)(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A8)(AP,
1/7/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heng_Samrin)

1980 Jan 7, Some 60,000 US oil
refinery workers went on nationwide strike for the 1st time in 11
years. No major disruptions were reported in the walkout.
(SFC, 1/7/05, p.F6)

1981 Jan 7, An operational and
planning assistance team (OPAT) arrived in El Salvador to provide
assistance in protecting the harvest from the guerrillas. By the end
of the Carter Administration, nineteen US military advisors had been
deployed there.
(http://tinyurl.com/3bk6f3)

1987 Jan 7, The US House of
Representatives, by House Resolution 12, established the Select
Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. The US
Senate passed a similar resolution a day earlier. The two Chambers
instructed their respective Committees to work together and charged
them with investigating, among other things, any activity of any
officer or entity of the United States Government relating to the
Iran initiative.
(www.pinknoiz.com/covert/weinberger.html)

1988 Jan 7, Secretary of State
George P. Shultz, seeking to smooth a rift caused by a United
Nations vote, told reporters that overall American support for
Israel remained "unshakable."
(AP, 1/7/98)
1988 Jan 7, British actor
Trevor Howard died in England at age 71.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1989 Jan 7, Emperor Hirohito of
Japan died at age 87 after the longest reign in the history of
Japan; he was succeeded by Crown Prince Akihito. Heisei, which means
Peace and Prosperity, was adopted as the new reign name. For the
first time since 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party lost its
majority in the Diet's Upper House. In 1989 Edward Behr authored
"Hirohito: Behind the Myth." In 2000 Herbert P. Bix authored
"Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan." Hirohito was a marine
biologist and collector. His work included the illustrated book
"Crabs of Sagami Bay."
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 217)(AP, 1/7/98)(WSJ,
8/30/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 5/29/01, p.A20)

1990 Jan 7, The president of El
Salvador, Alfredo Cristiani, said in a nationally broadcast address
that military men two months earlier had massacred six Jesuit
priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.
(AP, 1/7/00)

1991 Jan 7, Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney canceled plans to purchase the A-12 stealth attack plane
for the Navy.
(AP, 1/7/01)
1991 Jan 7, Pete Rose left an
Illinois federal prison camp and checked into a halfway house in
Cincinnati to complete his sentence for cheating on his taxes.
(AP, 1/7/01)
1991 Jan 7, Loyalist troops in
Haiti crushed a coup attempt that had threatened the transition of
power to the country’s first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
(AP, 1/7/01)

1993 Jan 7, The US claimed that
Saddam Hussein moved surface-to-air missiles into southern Iraq.
Baghdad refused to remove them and allied warplanes attacked the
missile sites and warships fired cruise missiles at a nuclear
facility near Baghdad.
(SFC, 9/4/96, p.A8)
1993 Jan 7, US forces in
Somalia unleashed tank, helicopter and rocket fire on two clan camps
in Mogadishu where snipers had been taking potshots at the troops.
Cpl. James Perciavalle of Leetsdale, Pa., became the 1st US Marine
wounded by friendly fire in Somalia.
(AP, 1/7/98)(Sewickley Herald (Pa), 3/3/93, p.11)
1993 Jan 7, A preliminary
report prepared for the European Community said Serb fighters may
have raped about 20,000 women in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
(AP, 1/7/98)

1994 Jan 7, The US government
reported the unemployment rate fell to a three-year low of 6.4
percent in December 1993.
(AP, 1/7/99)
1994 Jan 7, Nancy Kerrigan
withdrew from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Detroit, a
day after her right leg was severely bruised in an attack after a
practice session.
(AP, 1/7/99)

1995 Jan 7, Major General
Viktor Vorobyov, a senior commander leading Russian troops in their
advance on the secessionist capital of Chechnya, was killed by a
mortar shell.
(AP, 1/7/00)

1996 Jan 7, "Crazy After You"
closed at Shubert Theater, NYC, after 1622 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/show.asp?ID=2807)
1996 Jan 7, Pres. Clinton and
Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, engaged in a 5th sexual
encounter at the White House.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A13)
1996 Jan 7, Republicans
rejected President Clinton’s budget plan and warned they would close
government programs they didn’t like if there were no agreement on a
budget plan in the next few weeks.
(AP, 1/7/01)
1996 Jan 7, A major blizzard,
one of the worst in the century, paralyzed the Eastern United
States. More than 100 deaths were later blamed on the severe
weather.
(WSJ, 1/8/96, p.A-1)(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.R2)(AP,
1/7/01)

1997 Jan 7, Newt Gingrich
overcame dissension in GOP ranks to become the first Republican
re-elected House speaker in 68 years with 216 of 227 Republicans in
support.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.A5)(AP, 1/7/98)
1997 Jan 7, Serial killer Henry
Louis Wallace was convicted in Charlotte, N.C., of raping and
murdering 9 women over a 20 month period.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.A3)
1997 Jan 7, A 2 day Santa Ana
windstorm subsided in Southern California after causing power
blackouts that affected over a million Edison customers.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.A3)
1997 Jan 7, In Algiers a car
bomb killed 13 and wounded 10.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.A7)
1997 Jan 7, It was announced
that the government’s plan to privatize its 51% of Companhia Vale do
Rio Doce (CVRD) was opposed by former Presidents Jose Sarney and
Itamar Franco, as well as Workers’ Party leader Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva, all candidates in the 1998 elections. Vale’s Carajas mine in
Para produced 25% of the world’s iron ore and held reserves for some
400 years.
(SFC, 1/7/97, p.A10)(Econ, 4/24/10, p.35)
1997 Jan 7, Beryl Brainbridge
won the British Whitbread award for best novel of 1996 for "Every
Man for Himself," a tale of the Titanic disaster. Seamus Heaney won
poetry award for "The Spirit Level."
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.B5)
1997 Jan 7, The Hebron Protocol
or Hebron Agreement began and was concluded from January 15 to
January 17, 1997 between Israel, represented by PM Benjamin
Netanyahu, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
represented by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, under the supervision of
US Secretary of State Warren Christopher, for redeployment of
Israeli military forces in Hebron. Palestinian authorities gained
control of 80% of Hebron.
(SFC, 12/4/08, p.A27)
1997 Jan 7, The Jerusalem Prize
for literature was awarded to Spanish author Jorge Semprun (b.1923).
His works include "The Long Voyage," "Literature for Life," and the
screenplays for the Costas Gavras films "Z" and "The Confession."
(SFC, 1/9/97, p.E3)
1997 Jan 7, In France it was
announced that a 20.6% value-added tax would be placed on telephone
services offered by phone companies outside the European Union. The
charge was directed at "call-back" services mainly in the US.
(WSJ, 1/7/97, p.A14)
1997 Jan 7, In Honduras it was
reported that Chagas disease, a parasitical illness, has infected an
estimated 300,000 out of a population of 5.8 mil. Some 65,000 were
in the late stages.
(SFC, 1/7/97, p.A9)
1997 Jan 7, In South Korea
broadcasting and hospital unions joined the nationwide strike.
(SFC, 1/8/97, p.A6)
1997 Jan 7, Russia’s inflation
rate for 1996 was announced to have fallen to 21.8%, down from 133%
in 1995.
(WSJ, 1/7/97, p.A14)

1998 Jan 7, The jury in the
Terry Nichols case deadlocked over his punishment when it failed to
decide on how active his role in the Oklahoma bombing was. This
saved him from a death penalty and forced Judge Richard Matsch to
decide on a sentence.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A1)(AP, 1/7/99)
1998 Jan 7, In Mustang, Nevada,
two blasts at the Sierra Chemical Co. plant left 4 workers feared
killed.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A3)
1998 Jan 7, In Afghanistan it
was reported that some 600 civilians were dragged from their homes
and shot by the Taliban army in the northwest, prompting thousands
to flee the area. Most of the victims were said to be Uzbeks.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.B3)
1998 Jan 7, In Canada the
government apologized to the nation’s indigenous peoples for past
acts of oppression and pledged $245 million for counseling and
treatment programs. The aboriginal population is about 810,000 that
includes 38,000 Inuits and 139,000 Metis, people of mixed Indian and
white ancestry.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A13)(AP, 1/7/99)
1998 Jan 7, Pres. Mohhamad
Khatami of Iran endorsed cultural relations with the US but no
political ties in a preliminary effort to "crack the wall" of
hostility between the two countries.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Jan 7, In Mexico Chiapas
Gov. Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro submitted his resignation due to the
massacre in Acteal.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A12)
1998 Jan 7, In South Africa the
attorney general announced that former Pres. Peter Botha would be
prosecuted for refusing to appear before the Truth Commission and
for hindering its work.
(SFC, 1/8/98, p.A12)

1999 Jan 7, For the 2nd time in
history, an impeached American president went on trial before the
Senate. Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside over
the trial. Pres. Bill Clinton was ultimately acquitted of charges of
perjury and obstruction of justice.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A1)(AP, 1/7/05)
1999 Jan 7, A US jet fired on
an air defense station in Iraq after it was targeted on radar.
(WSJ, 1/8/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 7, The new Encarta
Africana contained 3,000 scholarly articles on black culture and
history as part of a 2-CD ROM set by Microsoft. It included a
timeline that combines events in Africa and America.
(SFC, 1/7/99, p.A13)
1999 Jan 7, In Brazil Minas
Gerais state declared a 90-day moratorium on debt owed to the
central government. Former Pres. Itamar Franco, the new governor of
Minas Gerais, had vowed to stop payment on over $15 billion to force
a renegotiation of payment terms. 24 of 27 states had fixed debt
agreements with the federal government.
(WSJ, 1/6/99, p.A17)(WSJ, 1/7/99, p.A1)
1999 Jan 7, In China police
arrested Song Xianggui (36) in Linghai city for setting off
explosives on a bus. 19 people were killed when his plan to stun
passengers to rob them went awry.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A16)
1999 Jan 7, In Colombia Manuel
Marulanda, leader of FARC, was scheduled to come down from the
mountains to talk peace with Pres. Pastrana at San Vicente del
Caguan. Marulanda failed to show but sent 3 top commanders in his
place.
(SFC, 1/7/99, p.A8)
1999 Jan 7, In Sierra Leone
rebels rampaged through Freetown as Pres. Kabbah announced an
agreement with jailed rival leader, Foday Sankoh, for a cease-fire.
(SFC, 1/8/99, p.A13)

2000 Jan 7, Pres. Clinton
announced a $91 million program to protect computer security as part
of the 2001 fiscal budget.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A1)
2000 Jan 7, US Representative
Dan Burton (Republican, Indiana), subpoenaed Elian Gonzalez to
testify before Congress, a bid to keep Elian in the United States
for at least another month while courts decided whether the
six-year-old should be returned to Cuba. Elian never actually
testified.
(AP, 1/7/01)
2000 Jan 7, Johnny Ely (66), a
short-order cook, won the New York State Lottery Millennium Millions
$100 million jackpot. He elected a one-time pay out of $44 million
with $17 million in taxes.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A2)
2000 Jan 7, Some 200 million
Orthodox Christians observed Christmas according to the old Julian
calendar.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.C1)
2000 Jan 7, It was reported
that hijackers in Europe were engaged in killing truck drivers and
stealing their new trucks for resale. One 50-member ring confessed
to the murder of 10 truckers at a charge of $8,500 per head.
(SFC, 1/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Jan 7, In Germany it was
reported that a recent series of tax cuts announced by Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder included a corporate exemption on capital gains
taxes on the sale of shares in other corporations. Current capital
gains taxes were close to 60%.
(WSJ, 1/7/00, p.A14)
2000 Jan 7, In Greece the
government promised tougher border security after a truck carrying
80 illegal immigrants from Turkey crashed and left 6 people dead.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A10)
2000 Jan 7, In Kosovo 2 Serbian
women were killed by an ethnic Albanian gang in Prizren. Attacks in
the last 2 days had left 4 Serb men wounded and 1 dead.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A10)
2000 Jan 7, Russia announced a
suspension of aerial bombardment in Grozny to allow civilians to
escape. A military shakeup was also announced.
(SFC, 1/8/00, p.A1)

2001 Jan 7, Pres. Clinton told
the people of Israel that "there is no choice for you but to divide
this land into two states for two people."
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A9)
2001 Jan 7, President-elect
George W. Bush's transition team acknowledged that Labor
Secretary-designate Linda Chavez had provided housing and financial
aid to an illegal immigrant. Chavez ended up withdrawing her
nomination.
(AP, 1/7/02)
2001 Jan 7, John Kufuor
(b.1938) became president of Ghana.
(Econ, 11/29/08,
p.51)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kufuor)
2001 Jan 7, Iraqi Kurdish
officials reported that at least 500 Turkish troops had pushed 100
miles into northern Iraq in response to a call for help from the
PUK. The PUK was fighting the PKK and had lost 200 soldiers in
recent weeks. Some 10,000 Turkish troops had entered northern Iraq
since Dec 20.
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A9)
2001 Jan 7, In the Ivory Coast
mutinous soldiers attacked the broadcasting facilities and offices
of state television and radio in Abidjan. The coup attempt was
reported to have failed. 32 people were arrested and at least 8
people were killed.
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A9)(SFC, 1/9/01, p.A15)
2001 Jan 7, In Russia Pres.
Putin pledged to pay all of its Soviet-era int’l. debts.
(SFC, 1/8/01, p.A10)

2002 Jan 7, US planes bombed
cave complexes in Afghanistan as British PM Tony Blair and 9 U.S.
senators swept into Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for an
unannounced visit and promised Afghan leaders their full support in
rebuilding the shattered country..
(SFC, 1/8/02, p.A11)(WSJ, 1/8/02, p.A1)(AP,
1/7/03)
2002 Jan 7, Louis Pollak, a
federal judge in Philadelphia, challenged the scientific validity of
fingerprint evidence. In March Pollak declared fingerprint id to be
the "bedrock of forensic science."
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.A1)(SFC, 3/14/02, p.A3)
2002 Jan 7, Yves Saint Laurent
announced his retirement and closure of the fashion house he'd
started 40 years earlier.
(SFC, 1/8/02, p.A1)(AP, 1/7/03)
2002 Jan 7, Scientists reported
that symptoms of Parkinson’s were relieved in rats when stem cells
were injected into their brains.
(WSJ, 1/8/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 7, Comedian Avery
Schreiber died in Los Angeles at age 66.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2002 Jan 7, In Kandahar 7
Taliban officials surrendered and were released by the governor.
None of the released were on US wanted lists.
(SFC, 1/10/02, p.A1)(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A13)

2003 Jan 7, Pres. Bush put
forward a $674 billion "growth and jobs" economic stimulus plan that
would provide tax relief to an estimated 92 million Americans by
accelerating income tax rate cuts, wiping out all federal taxes on
stock dividends paid to investors and boosting the child tax credit
by $400 per child.
(AP, 1/7/03)(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan 7, US Marines, both
active and reserves, were ordered to remain in service for the
coming 12 months.
(SFC, 1/10/03, p.A12)
2003 Jan 7, Police in London
announced they had found traces of the deadly poison ricin in a
north London apartment and arrested six men in connection with the
virulent toxin that has been linked to al-Qaida terrorists and Iraq.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2003 Jan 7, In Colombia rebels
ambushed a police convoy near the capital, killing at least 8
officers and wounding 5 in a bold, daylight attack.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, In Congo a military
court convicted and sentenced 26 people to death in the Jan 16, 2001
assassination of Congo's president, Laurent Kabila.
(AP, 1/7/03)(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A16)
2003 Jan 7, In Egypt Orthodox
Christmas was marked for the first time as a national holiday in
this predominantly Muslim nation.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, Israeli troops
exchanged fire with Palestinian militiamen for 4 hours, killing 3
gunmen before withdrawing from the outskirts of a refugee camp. The
Israeli government put new restrictions on travel by Palestinians.
(AP, 1/7/03)(SFC, 1/8/03, p.A11)
2003 Jan 7, In South Africa a
passenger train collided with a freight train, killing 10 people and
injuring 49.
(AP, 1/7/03)
2003 Jan 7, In northeastern
Uganda rival tribesmen armed with spears and guns clashed over
cattle, leaving at least 52 people dead in two days of fighting. At
least 35 Pokot and 17 Karamojong were killed.
(AP, 1/10/03)

2004 Jan 7, Pres. Bush
presented a plan to grant legal status to foreigners working in the
United States.
(AP, 1/8/04)(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 7, Digital radios went
on sale in the US.
(SFC, 1/7/04, p.B8)
2004 Jan 7, In Georgia Jerry
William Jones (31) killed 3 former in-laws and his infant daughter
and fled with 3 girl hostages. The girls were found safe and Jones
shot himself following a police chase.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Jan 7, L. Paul Bremer, the
top American civilian official in Iraq, said U.S. authorities will
release 506 low-level Iraqi prisoners while increasing the bounties
for fugitives suspected of major roles in attacks against coalition
forces.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, In Colombia FARC
rebels killed 8 peasant farmers because they refused to sell them
their coca crops.
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 7, Dominica's main
political party chose Roosevelt Skerrit (31), the education
minister, as the next leader of this Caribbean country.
(AP, 1/8/04)
2004 Jan 7, Guatemala signed an
accord to let UN prosecutors handle organized crime and human-rights
cases.
(AP, 1/8/04)(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A1)
2004 Jan 7, In southwestern
Guatemala men with automatic weapons hijacked a minibus carrying 13
American tourists, killing one passenger. In 2005 Henry Giovanny
Vicente (27), and Marvin Sebastian Berganza (29) were convicted by a
3-judge panel of being accomplices in the killing of Brett Richards,
a 52-year-old architect from Ogden, Utah, who died during a
confrontation with bandits who hijacked a bus of Mormon tourists
visiting Mayan ruins.
(AP, 1/8/04)(WSJ, 1/8/04, p.A1)(AP, 11/30/05)
2004 Jan 7, Haiti university
students marched against Pres. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, sparking
clashes that left at least 2 dead amid a swelling opposition
movement against the leader.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, In Iran a
57-year-old man was pulled from the rubble of Ban's earthquake,
barely conscious but still alive because he had a source of water
during the 13 days he was buried. He died 4 days later.
(AP, 1/8/04)(AP, 1/11/04)
2004 Jan 7, L. Paul Bremer, the
top American civilian official in Iraq, said U.S. authorities will
release 506 low-level Iraqi prisoners while increasing the bounties
for fugitives suspected of major roles in attacks against coalition
forces.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Israeli soldiers
patrolling West Bank towns shot and killed 3 Palestinian militants
during an ongoing sweep of the area.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Najib Razak, a
veteran politician, was named as Malaysia's deputy PM.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Mauritania armed
security force members stopped racers from the famed Paris-Dakar
Rally, demanding $65 from each vehicle to pass the border. The 26th
Paris-Dakar race crosses 6,920.4-miles, seven countries and the
Sahara Desert, ending Jan. 18 outside the Senegalese capital, Dakar
(AP, 1/9/04)
2004 Jan 7, Morocco pardoned 33
prisoners, including a prominent journalist.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, In Scotland Stephen
Gough (44) was convicted of breaching the peace and sentenced to
three months in jail for trying to walk the length of Britain naked
to promote public nudity.
(AP, 1/7/04)
2004 Jan 7, Ingrid Thulin
(b.1926), Swedish actress, died in Stockholm. Her films included
"Foreign Intrigue" (1956).
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A21)

2005 Jan 7, A military jury at
Fort Hood, Texas, acquitted Army Sgt. Tracy Perkins of involuntary
manslaughter in the alleged drowning of an Iraqi civilian, but
convicted him of assault in the January 2004 incident.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2005 Jan 7, The nuclear
submarine USS San Francisco ran aground 350 miles off the Pacific
Ocean territory of Guam, injuring about 20 crew members. One died
the next day.
(AP, 1/8/05)(AP, 1/9/05)
2005 Jan 7, Conservative
columnist Armstrong Williams was dropped by a major syndication
service because he'd accepted a payment from the Bush administration
to promote the No Child Left Behind law.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2005 Jan 7, Brad Pitt and
Jennifer Aniston announced they were separating after four years of
marriage.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2005 Jan 7, Rosemary Kennedy
(86), the mentally retarded oldest sister of President Kennedy and
the inspiration for the Special Olympics, died at a Fort Atkinson,
Wis., hospital.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2005 Jan 7, Congo’s electoral
commission hinted that elections scheduled for June would be
postponed.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.44)
2005 Jan 7, Authorities raised
Indonesia's death toll by 7,000, bringing the overall total killed
by the disaster to more than 147,000.
(AP, 1/7/05)
2005 Jan 7, In northern Italy a
passenger train and a freight train collided in thick fog on the
Bologna-Verona line, killing 17 people and injuring dozens.
(AP, 1/7/05)(WSJ, 1/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Jan 7, In
Indian-controlled Kashmir police said militants stormed a government
building, setting it on fire with 70 employees still trapped inside.
Three people were killed in the fighting.
(AP, 1/7/05)
2005 Jan 7, Palestinian
militants attacked a group of Israeli civilians outside the West
Bank city of Nablus, wounding four people, including one who was in
critical condition.
(AP, 1/7/05)

2006 Jan 7, US Representative
Tom DeLay (R-Texas), facing corruption charges, stepped down as
House majority leader.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2006 Jan 7, In East Palo Alto,
Ca., police officer Richard May (38) was gunned down after
responding to a report of a fight at a taqueria. Alberto Alvarez
(23) was arrested the next day. In 2009 a jury convicted him of
first-degree murder and recommended that he be executed. On Feb 8,
2010, a judge sentenced Alvarez to death.
(SFC, 1/9/06, p.A1)(SFC, 11/26/09, p.C2)(SFC,
12/23/09, p.C2)(SFC, 2/9/10, p.C2)
2006 Jan 7, In Afghanistan a
roadside bomb blew up as a van packed with police cadets and
trainers was driving through the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing
a passer-by and wounding a police colonel and driver.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, In eastern
Australia a 21-year-old woman died after a shark attack near North
Stradbroke Island. A camper on a nearby beach said the woman had
been scuba diving in waist-deep water at the time of the attack.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, Heinrich Harrer
(93), an Austrian mountaineer and former Nazi who became a friend
and tutor of the young Dalai Lama, died. Actor Brad Pitt played
Harrer in the 1997 film "Seven Years in Tibet," which was based on
Harrer's 1953 memoir of his time in Tibet.
(AP, 1/7/06)(Econ, 1/21/06, p.83)
2006 Jan 7, A study reported by
Brazilian media said more than 1,000 children have been living
underneath highway overpasses, inside tunnels and on city squares in
Sao Paulo.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, The World Bank
under Paul Wolfowitz halted all lending to Chad saying the country
broke a deal to use oil money to cut poverty.
(WSJ, 1/7/06, p.A1)(Econ, 3/4/06, p.69)
2006 Jan 7, China's ruling
Communist Party called on its members to do more to fight widespread
corruption and politically explosive problems such as unpaid back
wages for migrant workers.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, In Haiti Brazilian
Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, commander of UN
peacekeepers, was found dead in an apparent suicide in a room at the
Montana hotel in Port-au-Prince.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, In India folk
singer Bant Singh lost both arms and a leg in an attack after he
dared to challenge high-caste landlords in his area of the
northwestern state of Punjab who had raped his 17-year-old daughter.
Singh's tenacity and refusal to keep quiet led to the conviction of
the seven men accused of raping his daughter.
(AFP,
2/21/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bant_Singh)
2006 Jan 7, In Iraq gunmen
kidnapped Jill Carroll, a female American journalist, and killed her
Iraqi translator in western Baghdad. Carroll was freed almost three
months later.
(AP,
1/7/07)(www.csmonitor.com/2006/0110/p01s04-woiq.html)
2006 Jan 7, Talib Enezy
Ghadban, an Iraqi detainee held at the US-controlled Abu Ghraib
prison in Baghdad, died in custody. The military said he died of
complications from an apparent stroke and an investigation was under
way.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Jan 7, A US Black Hawk
helicopter crashed in northern Iraq, killing all 12 Americans
believed to be aboard. 2 US Marines were killed by roadside bombs in
separate incidents.
(AP, 1/8/06)
2006 Jan 7, The French
engineer, Bernard Planche (52), was pushed out of a car near a
checkpoint in a Baghdad suburb. He had been kidnapped Dec 5.
(AP, 1/8/06)
2006 Jan 7, Visiting Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw has said it was hoped Britain's 8,000 troops
would start to withdraw from Iraq in a matter of months.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, Japanese police
arrested William Oliver Reese (21), an American sailor, on charges
of robbing and beating a Japanese woman to death. Reese was accused
of robbing Yoshie Sato (56) of $129.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, Environmentalists
continued attempts to thwart Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean,
as both sides accused each other of underhand tactics in the
high-seas struggle.
(AFP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, Cross border firing
at a Pakistani village near the Afghan border killed eight people in
Saidgi village. Pakistan protested the incident to the US military.
(AP, 1/9/06)
2006 Jan 7, In Pakistan
assailants armed with rockets and assault rifles attacked a newly
built checkpoint near the Afghan border before dawn, killing all
eight security forces.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, In Pakistan some 50
survivors of the Oct 8 earthquake commandeered 2 UN relief
helicopters to flee the disaster zone.
(WSJ, 1/7/06, p.A1)
2006 Jan 7, In Sri Lanka an
explosives-rigged fishing boat rammed a navy patrol, killing 13
sailors in a suspected rebel attack.
(AP, 1/7/06)
2006 Jan 7, American singer
Harry Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor
Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West in a
meeting with Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez.
(AP, 1/8/06)

2007 Jan 7, Newly elected House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, interviewed on CBS' "Face the Nation," said
Democrats running Congress would not give President Bush a blank
check to wage war in Iraq.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2007 Jan 7, The North American
Int’l. Auto Show opened in Detroit. China’s Changfeng Group Co.,
made its first appearance at the international auto show in Detroit,
Mich. China numbered over 100 automakers and industry consolidation
was expected.
(Econ, 1/6/07, p.54)(WSJ, 1/3/07, p.B1)
2007 Jan 7, Bobby Hamilton
(49), NASCAR driver, died. He had won the 2001 Talladega 500.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2007 Jan 7, In eastern
Afghanistan a roadside bomb ripped through a vehicle, killing a
woman, her two newborn twin babies and the children's grandmother.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, Activists and
police clashed in Bangladesh, injuring at least 50 people at the
start of a three-day transport blockade aimed at derailing upcoming
general elections.
(Reuters, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, Staff at a
logistics company in Qingdao, in China's eastern Shandong province,
found a human torso in a box seeping blood but marked as carrying
medicine. Two days later, police in Beijing and Jiangyin, in eastern
Jiangsu province, found a man's head and arms. On Jan 15 state media
said Chinese police have detained a man and a woman suspected of
killing a man and posting his body parts to three different cities.
(Reuters, 1/15/07)
2007 Jan 7, A helicopter
crashed into the garden terrace of a restaurant in southeastern
France, killing three people on the ground and severely injuring a
fourth.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, Suspected
separatists fatally shot eight people in India's northeast as army,
police and paramilitary forces swept through a remote corner of the
region after earlier militant attacks killed dozens.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, Three US airmen
died in a car bombing in Baghdad, among at least 17 people killed in
violence across Iraq as Iraqi troops launched a fresh battle to oust
militias and pacify the capital. Two American soldiers were killed
north of Baghdad.
(AP, 1/7/07)(AP, 1/8/07)
2007 Jan 7, In Israel former PM
Ehud Barak announced his political comeback, saying he will run for
the leadership of the Labor Party in a first step toward a possible
bid at regaining the country's top office.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, In Jamaica the
Accompong Maroons, descendants of freed African slaves, vowed to
fight any plans for bauxite mining in the forested region where they
have lived in semiautonomy for centuries. Sydney Peddie, the group's
leader, said opening up the territory to mining would breach a
treaty signed between the Maroons and the British in 1739, which
gave the group nearly 25,000 acres in Cockpit Country, an
inhospitable terrain of rocky cliffs and limestone towers.
(AP, 1/8/07)
2007 Jan 7, A senior Kenyan
health official said about 75 people have died of Rift Valley fever
(hemorrhagic fever) during the past three weeks and another 183 are
infected with it. The last outbreak of the disease in East Africa
was between 1997-1998, when 478 people died in Somalia and Kenya.
Currently there was no human vaccine.
(AP, 1/8/07)(WSJ, 1/9/07, p.A1)
2007 Jan 7, Tens of thousands
of Fatah supporters packed Gaza's main soccer stadium in a show of
strength to boost the movement in its increasingly violent struggle
against the Islamic militant group Hamas.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, Stanislaw Wielgus,
Warsaw's new archbishop, resigned over his involvement with the
communist-era secret police. The Vatican said his past actions had
"gravely compromised his authority."
(AP, 1/7/07)
2007 Jan 7, Russia stopped
pumping oil into a pipeline network that crossed Belarus. The
line delivered 12.5% of the EU’s oil needs.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.44)
2007 Jan 7, An American AC-130
gunship began attacking suspected al-Qaida positions in southern
Somalia. The US airstrikes were the first offensive in the African
country since 18 US troops were killed there in 1993. The main
target was Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, who allegedly planned the 1998
attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
that killed 225 people.
(SFC, 1/11/07, p.A4)(AP, 1/9/07)
2007 Jan 7, Eight Taiwanese
banks took charge of a failing subsidiary of the country's Rebar
conglomerate, just a day after the financial regulator rescued a
private bank owned by the same group.
(AFP, 1/7/07)

2008 Jan 7, Jerry Fitch, a
Mississippi businessman, must pay more than 750,000 dollars in
damages to the man whose wife he wooed away, after the US Supreme
Court declined to hear an appeal in the case.
(AFP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, The Stanford Center
for the Study of Poverty and Inequality (www.inequality.com)
announced the launch of its new quarterly publication, Pathways, an
online and hardcopy magazine dedicated to examining poverty and
inequality in the United States.
(SFC, 1/29/08, p.E1)
2008 Jan 7, Starbucks ousted
CEO Jim McDonald and Howard Schultz, current Chairman and former CEO
(1987-2000), took over. Starbucks faced added competition as
McDonald’s planned to install coffee bars selling espresso.
(WSJ, 1/8/08, p.A1)
2008 Jan 7, Tornadoes were
reported or suspected in southwest Missouri, southeastern Wisconsin,
Arkansas, Illinois and Oklahoma. Two people were killed in Missouri.
(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 7, In Alabama Lam
Luong (37), a shrimp fisherman and drug addict, threw his 4 young
children into the Intracoastal Waterway from the Dauphin Island
bridge. He initially reported the children missing and then
confessed. On March 5, 2009, Luong pleaded guilty and asked to be
put to death. On April 30 he was sentenced to death. In 2013 an
appeals court ordered a new trial.
(SFC, 1/10/08, p.A3)(SFC, 3/6/09, p.A6)(SFC,
5/1/09, p.A8)(SSFC, 2/17/13, p.A12)
2008 Jan 7, Bill Belew
(b.1931), costume king, died in Palm Springs, Ca. He created the
outfits worn by Elvis Presley and other pop stars.
(WSJ, 2/2/08, p.A12)
2008 Jan 7, In southern
Afghanistan a suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked a border
police patrol, killing a policeman. In neighboring Helmand province,
police discovered and tried to defuse a remote-controlled roadside
bomb in Nad Ali district, but it exploded, killing two policemen and
two civilians. In eastern Afghanistan as roadside bomb killed two
soldiers from the US-led coalition.
(AP, 1/7/08)(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 7, Australians battled
both fires and some of the worst flooding in decades that stranded
residents in several communities after days of intense summer heat
and storms.
(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 7, Britain’s PM Gordon
Brown announced plans for a new national screening program to combat
some of the country's biggest killer diseases.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, Chadian air force
planes attacked a Chadian rebel base across the border, southwest of
El-Geneina in the Darfur region of Sudan.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, China’s state media
said authorities in central China have expelled 500 people from the
Communist Party for defying the country's one-child policy. Wei
Wenhua (41), a passer-by who filmed a streetside fracas between
villagers and authorities, was beaten and killed in Hubei province.
His death touched off protests in central China, in the latest
incident to underscore public anger over abusive treatment by
government employees.
(AP, 1/7/08)(AP, 1/9/08)
2008 Jan 7, Colombia’s army
captured Carlos Marin Guarin, who uses the nom de guerre "Pablito,"
a senior commander of the ELN, Colombia’s second largest rebel
group.
(AP, 1/9/08)
2008 Jan 7, Philip Agee (72), a
former CIA agent who became an outspoken critic of Washington's Cuba
policy, died in a Havana hospital following ulcer surgery. Agee quit
the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a
time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and
sympathizers. His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited
alleged CIA misdeeds against leftists in the region that included a
22-page list of purported agency operatives.
(AP, 1/9/08)
2008 Jan 7, President Mikhail
Saakashvili said his re-election demonstrates that Georgia is on the
road to becoming a European democracy, while his opponents denounced
the vote as fraudulent and vowed to renew street protests.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, In Guatemala the
National Convergence Front (FCN) was formed by former military
officers. In March 2013, the party chose the popular comic TV actor
Jimmy Morales as its secretary-general.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Convergence_Front)(Econ,
10/31/15, p.36)
2008 Jan 7, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad presented Iran's budget to parliament, promising it
would curb a sharp rise in inflation and redistribute Iran's
abundant oil revenues among the country's 70 million people.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, In Iraq a double
suicide attack outside an agency that cares for Sunni mosques and
shrines killed a prominent leader of a US-backed group fighting
al-Qaida and at least five others. 12 people died in the twin
bombing. In eastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb detonated near a
technology university, killing four people, including a student, and
wounding 11 others. In Baghdad's Jadriyah neighborhood, two roadside
bombs went off minutes apart, killing one civilian and wounding four
other people, including three policeman. Gunmen kidnapped 8 members
of a newly-formed US-backed Shiite armed group in northern Baghdad's
Shaab neighborhood.
(AP, 1/7/08)(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 7, Police in Naples
clashed with protestors over a mafia-linked rubbish disposal crisis
as the Italian government convened an emergency meeting to try and
resolve the row.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, Kenya's opposition
leader canceled nationwide protests, saying he wanted to avoid new
violence and give mediation a chance to resolve the election dispute
that has killed nearly 500 people in political and ethnic
bloodletting. The chief US envoy for Africa said the vote count from
Kenya's election was rigged, but both parties could have been
involved, declining to blame either President Mwai Kibaki or the
opposition leader who ran against him.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, Kosovo's rival
parties struck a power-sharing deal to form a government that is
expected to declare independence from Serbia this year.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, A shootout between
Mexican authorities and suspected criminals just across the border
from Texas left three people dead and eight injured.
(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 7, The National
Institute of Disaster Management (INGC) said 6 people have died and
more than 20,000 others have been displaced by Mozambique's rising
waters, the worst since the deadly flooding of 2000 to 2001.
(AFP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, In South Korea fire
tore through a refrigeration warehouse under construction in an
industrial district south of Seoul, killing 40 people and sending
toxic fumes into the air.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, According to new
military figures gunbattles between government troops and Tamil
Tiger rebels have brought the death toll for four days of fighting
to 81. Violence intensified following the government's Jan 2
announcement that it would formally withdraw from a 2002 cease-fire
accord.
(AP, 1/7/08)
2008 Jan 7, Armed men opened
fire on a UN/African Union supply convoy in Sudan's war-torn Darfur
region, the first attack on the newly formed joint peacekeeping
mission. On Jan 10 Sudan admitted that its troops had opened
fire on a joint UN/African Union peacekeeping convoy in Darfur
saying the attack was the result of a "shared mistake."
(Reuters, 1/8/08)(Reuters, 1/10/08)
2008 Jan 7, The Tunis-based
Arab League Educational Cultural and Scientific Organization said
nearly one in 3 people in the Arab world is illiterate, including
nearly half of all women in the region.
(AP, 1/8/08)
2008 Jan 7, In Turkey an
accused Kurdish rebel suspected of detonating a deadly car bomb last
week in Diyarbakir was captured. Six other suspects also were
detained.
(AP, 1/8/08)

2009 Jan 7, The United States
said it has released another $99 million as part of an aid package
to support Mexico's police and soldiers in their fight against drug
cartels. The US released $197 million in December as part of the
$1.3 billion US anti-drug package, known as the Merida Initiative.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, The SEC charged
Joseph S. Forte of Broomall, Pennsylvania, an investment fund
manager, with running a Ponzi scheme since at least 1995. Losses to
investors were estimated at $50 million.
(WSJ, 1/28/09,
p.A12)(www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr20847.htm)
2009 Jan 7, US health officials
said an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning has made 388 people
sick across 42 states, sending 18 percent of them to the hospital.
(Reuters, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, A new federal
report said Mississippi now has the nation's highest teen pregnancy
rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, In Oakland, Ca.,
demonstrations over the New year’s killing of Oscar Grant (22) by a
BART police officer turned violent. BART Officer Johannes Mehserle
quit his job avoiding an interview with police internal affairs
investigators.
(SFC, 1/8/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 7, In San Francisco
Peter Fong, a paranoid schizophrenic, slashed the throat of Ryosuke
Yoshioka, a sushi chef, in a parking garage in the Inner Richmond
neighborhood. In 2013 Fong was sentenced to life in a mental
hospital.
(SFC, 5/18/13, p.C4)
2009 Jan 7, Bank of America
Corp. raised more money to cope with US economic turmoil by selling
part of its stake in China Construction Bank Ltd., China's
second-biggest commercial lender, for $2.8 billion.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, Afghan locals said
that operations by the NATO-led force in the southern province of
Helmand had killed 19 civilians.
(AFP, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 7, In Argentina an
Italian climber and an Argentine guide both died when a storm
trapped five mountaineers just below the summit of the Aconcagua
peak, the highest mountain in the Americas. The three others
survived.
(AP, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 7, In China a court in
Hangzhou, a prosperous city in eastern Zhejiang province, sentenced
Wang Rongqing (65) to 6 years in jail on charges of subverting state
power for organizing the banned China Democracy Party.
(AP, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 7, The EU said Russia
and Ukraine will accept using international monitors to verify the
transit of natural gas from Russia through Ukraine's pipelines.
Russia's gas giant Gazprom completely stopped sending gas to
European consumers at 7:44 a.m. (0544 GMT). 80% of Russian gas
shipped via Ukraine.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, Freezing
temperatures and exceptional snowfall caused travel delays across
Europe and were blamed for at least 12 deaths, including that of a
man in Milan who was crushed when a canopy collapsed under the
weight of snow.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, In Hungary a masked
gunman shot to death Jozsef Takacs (62), a school principal, and
Laszlo Papp (32), a teacher, at a school in the Budapest
neighborhood of Csepel. 2 suspects were arrested the next day.
Police said a security guard shot the two men, hours after he and an
accomplice, a 36-year-old former administrator at the school, were
fired by the principal on suspicion of embezzling up to 4 million
forints ($20,000, euro14,600).
(AP, 1/7/09)(AP, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 7, B. Ramalingu Raju,
the chairman of India's Satyam Computer Services Ltd., quit after
admitting the company's profits had been doctored for several years,
shaking faith in the country's corporate giants as shares of the
software services provider plunged nearly 80 percent. Raju was
arrested 2 days later as Indian authorities fired the remaining
board members and launched an accounting review of the company.
(AP, 1/7/09)(WSJ, 1/10/09, p.B1)
2009 Jan 7, In northern Iraq a
female suicide bomber allegedly planning to blow herself up among
Shiite pilgrims was arrested, as millions joined processions across
the country to honor the martyrdom of one of their most revered
saints.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, Israel
ordered a three-hour pause in its Gaza offensive to allow food and
fuel to reach besieged Palestinians, and said it welcomed a
cease-fire proposal as long as Hamas halts rockets and weapons
smuggling. About 300 of the more than 670 Palestinians killed so far
were civilians. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that Israel
and the Palestinian Authority have accepted an Egyptian-French plan
for Gaza.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, Wildlife activists
said the box turtle is disappearing across Malaysia because of
increased illegal hunting for its meat and use in traditional
Chinese medicine.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, In Mexico four
decapitated bodies were found in the Otay Mesa neighborhood of
Tijuana. The victims' heads were left inside a black bag at the
scene.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 7, Pakistan’s PM
Yousuf Raza Gilani fired national security advisor Mahmood Ali
Durrani after he gave media interviews on national security issues
without consulting Gilani. The move came hours after Durrani and
other top officials told reporters that the sole surviving Mumbai
attacker was a Pakistani citizen.
(AP, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 7, Sri Lanka
officially outlawed the Tamil Tigers, ruling out for now the
possibility of peace talks to end a 25-year civil war.
(WSJ, 1/8/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 7, Taiwan’s central
bank unexpectedly cut its key interest rates by half a percentage
point and urged banks to increase corporate lending. The finance
ministry had just reported that ex[ports in December had fallen
41.9% from a year earlier.
(WSJ, 1/8/09, p.A8)
2009 Jan 7, Turkey’s state news
said police had detained about 40 people, including 3 retired
generals, in a probe of an alleged plot to overthrow the
Islamist-rooted AK Party government.
(WSJ, 1/8/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 7, Venezuela's Citgo
Petroleum Corp. announced its fuel oil aid program would continue,
just two days after its partner nonprofit group, Boston-based
Citizens Energy, said Citgo had halted the free fuel shipments due
to the world economic crisis.
(AP, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 7, In Zimbabwe seven
members of the main opposition party were the first of dozens of
jailed dissidents to be formally charged, and they pleaded not
guilty in a bombing plot. Zimbabwe delayed the opening of schools by
two weeks, amid fears that teachers may not show up for classes due
to the country's worsening humanitarian crisis.
(AP, 1/7/09)(AFP, 1/7/09)

2010 Jan 7, The so-called
Liberty Head nickel, a rare 1913 US coin once owned by an Egyptian
king and later featured in a famous US TV detective series, was sold
for more than $3.7 million (2.3 million pounds) in a public auction
in Florida.
(Reuters, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 7, US scientists
released a paper saying that mountaintop coal mining is so
destructive that the government should stop issuing permits to do
it. Earlier in the week the EPA issued a new permit for the Hobet 45
mine in West Virginia.
(SFC, 1/8/10, p.A11)
2010 Jan 7, Intel CEO Paul
Otellini introduced a technology called Intel Wireless Display
(WiDi) that allows a user to beam the contents of a computer screen
to a TV.
(SFC, 1/9/10, p.D1)
2010 Jan 7, Oaksterdam Univ., a
pioneering college dedicated to the cannabis industry, held its
grand opening in Oakland, Ca.
(SFC, 1/12/10,
p.E3)(www.oaksterdamuniversity.com/)
2010 Jan 7, In St. Louis, Mo.,
three people were killed and four wounded after a man armed with an
assault rifle and a handgun opened fire at a manufacturing plant.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, In Afghanistan a
suicide bomber killed 8 civilians and a senior security commander in
Gardez, the capital of eastern Paktia province, hours after a
provincial governor survived a blast in nearby Khost province. A
roadside bombs in Uruzgan province killed 8 Afghan soldiers. Another
roadside bomb in the east killed a US service member.
(AFP, 1/7/10)(AP, 1/8/10)(SFC, 1/8/10, p.A4)
2010 Jan 7, In Algeria a
stand-off with police began in the industrial town of Rouiba after
the 5,000 employees of the state-owned National Company of
Industrial Vehicles (SNVI) started an indefinite strike action to
demand higher wages and better terms.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, In Argentina Martin
Redrado (b.1961), governor of the central bank, was dismissed by
Pres. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. She signed a decree firing him
for refusing to use currency reserves to pay foreign debt.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8447428.stm)
2010 Jan 7, China executed 7
gang leaders in Hebei province for murder, gun sales, gambling and
other crimes in what state media called their province's worst gang
case since the founding of communist China 60 years ago. In eastern
China some 100 hired thugs beat farmers who had resisted eviction in
the city of Pizhou in Jiangsu province. One woman was killed and
another woman was severely injured. The next day up to 2,000 angry
villagers descended on government offices in Pizhou to protest the
issue and clashed with police over the forced evictions.
(AP, 1/7/10)(AFP, 1/12/10)
2010 Jan 7, In the Dominican
Republic 4 people, including two US citizens, went missing on a
fishing trip off the southern coast. Robert Wayne and Laura Ricart
left Boca Chica with Spaniard Javier Jorge and Dominican Plinio
Jacobo, aboard a 24-foot (7m) boat.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 7, Eurostar passengers
faced further disruption after one of its high-speed trains got
stuck for 2 hours in the Channel Tunnel again, weeks after a major
breakdown due to the cold.
(AFP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, In Egypt thousands
clashed with police during a funeral procession for the seven people
killed in an attack on churchgoers leaving a midnight Mass for
Coptic Christians.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, In Iran armed
pro-government demonstrators opened fire on the car of former
presidential candidate and opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi, as he
was leaving a building in Qazvin .
(AP, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 7, In Iraq a series of
5 blasts killed at least 8 people in western Anbar province. In
Diyala province a bomb exploded near a police station, killing one
policeman and injuring ten other people near the Iranian border.
(AP, 1/7/10)(SFC, 1/8/10, p.A4)
2010 Jan 7, In
Indian-controlled Kashmir government forces ended a 20-hour
gunbattle with suspected rebels in Srinagar, shooting and
killing the two attackers who paralyzed the region's main city.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, Kenya attempted to
deport Sheik Abdullah el-Faisal, a Jamaican-born radical Muslim
cleric, to Gambia after several countries, including the United
States, denied him a transit visa. Kenya's immigration minister said
Gambian authorities have agreed to help el-Faisal find his way home
to Jamaica. Attempts to deport el-Faisal failed because he was
denied a transit visa when he arrived in Nigeria en route to Gambia,
which had agreed to host him. El-Faisal was flown back to Kenya on
Jan 10.
(AP, 1/7/10)(AP, 1/11/10)
2010 Jan 7, In Mexico gunmen
attacked an army patrol in the western state of Michoacan with
assault rifles and grenades, touching off a gunbattle that killed a
soldier and four suspects.
(AP, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 7, A Moroccan court
sentenced 14 members of a suspected terror cell to prison terms of
four to 15 years for planning attacks against tourist and government
targets. Prosecutors had alleged that the group known as Fath Al
Andalous (Conquest of Andalusia) was well advanced in planning
attacks on tourist sites in the southern city of Agadir and a
military barracks in Laayoune.
(AFP, 1/8/10)
2010 Jan 7, Gaza militants
fired at least 10 mortar shells at Israel, causing no injuries or
damage. international activists delivered hundreds of tons of
medicine and humanitarian aid to Gaza. The convoy was led by
maverick British lawmaker George Galloway, who said the group "will
be back with more (aid) until this criminal siege imposed on the
people of Gaza, to punish them for how they voted in a free
election, is lifted."
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, Nepal began
releasing hundreds of former child soldiers, who once fought for the
Maoist rebels, from the UN-monitored detention camps they have
called home for the past three years to begin new lives as
civilians.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, Russian police in
Dagestan killed two suspected militants in a counterterrorism
operation launched in response to a suicide blast that took the
lives of six officers. One of the slain militants was named as
Ismail Ichakayev, a man reportedly wanted for masterminding several
bombings and other attacks on officials.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, Rwanda and France
pledged to improve ties after a lengthy freeze in diplomatic
relations triggered by a French judge issuing arrest warrants for
top aides to President Paul Kagame.
(AFP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, Zimbabwe halted a
controversial sale of 300,000 carats of diamonds, but blamed
bureaucratic hold-ups rather than a scandal over rights abuses by
the military in the diamond fields.
(AFP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 7, A top UN human
rights investigator said video footage purportedly showing troops
shooting blindfolded, naked Tamils in the final months of Sri
Lanka's civil war, appeared to be authentic. The video, reportedly
shot by a soldier with a mobile phone, revived calls for a war
crimes investigation and cast a shadow over the upcoming
presidential elections.
(AP, 1/8/10)

2011 Jan 7, Arizona police said
they've found the bodies of two of the three men reported missing
after test-driving a Jeep in the Salt River bottom in southwest
Phoenix. The men reportedly took their Jeep out to the river bottom
a day earlier to test the vehicle and never returned home.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 7, The San Francisco
Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 for City Administrator Ed Lee to
serve as interim mayor replacing Gavin Newsom, who was elected as
California’s Lt. Gov.
(SFC, 1/8/11, p.A1)
2011 Jan 7, In Chicago police
shot and killed Darius Pinex (27) after he attempted to flee arrest.
Pinex had more than two dozen previous arrests on his record,
including drug possession, burglary and resisting arrest. In 2016 a
federal judge accused a city lawyer of hiding evidence in the
shooting and a $2.4 million settlement was recommended for the
Pinex’s family.
(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A8)
2011 Jan 7, In Nevada a tip led
police to the body of dancer Deborah Flores-Narvaez (31) in downtown
Las Vegas. Police booked her boyfriend, Jason Griffith (32), on
suspicion of murder.
(SSFC, 1/9/11, p.A10)
2011 Jan 7, In NYC Carlos
Castro (65), a Portuguese TV reporter, was found castrated and
bludgeoned to death at the InterContinental Hotel. His young
boyfriend, model Renato Seabra (21) was arrested by police.
(SSFC, 1/9/11, p.A11)
2011 Jan 7, Former Laotian
general Vang Pao (81), died in a Californian hospital. He once
commanded a CIA-backed "secret army" of Hmong guerrillas during the
Vietnam War. He fled to the United States in 1975 after communists
ousted Laos' royal rulers, and was credited with helping negotiate
the resettlement in America of tens of thousands of fellow Hmong. In
2007 Vang Pao was arrested in California along with eight others on
conspiracy charges after authorities allegedly "interrupted a plot
to overthrow the government of Laos by force and violence" according
to the justice department. The charges were dropped in 2009.
(AFP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, In southern
Afghanistan a Taliban suicide bomber in Spin Boldak assassinated a
police commander named Ramazan and killed 16 others at a public
bath. Criminal investigation police chief Farid Ahmad was killed in
a drive-by shooting in Kandahar. Hundreds of Afghans demonstrated
outside the Iranian Embassy in Kabul to protest Iran's blocking of
thousands of fuel trucks at the border with Afghanistan, a step that
has sent domestic fuel prices soaring as the country's harsh winter
sets in. 3 NATO troops were killed in a roadside explosion.
(AFP, 1/7/11)(SFC, 1/8/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 7, In Algeria fresh
rioting broke out in Algiers as police deployed around mosques and
authorities suspended soccer championship matches after violent
protests over food prices and unemployment. Two demonstrators died
in the spreading unrest over rising food prices.
(Reuters, 1/7/11)(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 7, Former British
legislator David Chaytor (61) was jailed over the country's
lawmakers' expense check scandal, becoming the first person to be
imprisoned following the damaging affair which dented public trust
in politics. Chaytor had held a House of Commons seat in the
northern England town of Bury from 1997 to 2010. He was suspended by
the Labour Party in 2009, and stepped down as a lawmaker ahead of a
national election last May.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, Chile recognized
Palestinian statehood, joining other South American nations in a
push for Palestinians and Israelis to keep negotiating toward a
lasting peace in the Middle East.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 7, German authorities
stopped more than 4,700 farms from selling their meat and eggs as a
precautionary measure after animal feed was found to be contaminated
with cancer-causing chemicals. Authorities believed that some
150,000 tons of feed for poultry and swine containing industrial fat
has been fed to livestock across Germany. The fat contained dioxins
and should not have been in the food.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, India’s Border
Security Force (BSF) shot dead a 15-year-old girl, Felani, at an
illegal crossing into Bangladesh from West Bengal. She was on her
way to get married.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.54)
2011 Jan 7, In Iraq
unidentified gunmen killed a family of five in a predawn attack on a
home in Hussainya, 25km northeast of Baghdad.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, Israeli troops
mistakenly shot and killed Omar Kawasmeh, a 65-year-old Palestinian
man, during a predawn raid to arrest a Hamas militant in the West
Bank. The raid targeted one of six Hamas fighters released from
prison a day earlier by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. 5
of the freed militants, including the target of the raid in which
the man was killed, were arrested overnight.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, A Jamaica coast
guard tried to stop a Honduran fishing boat in lobster- and
conch-rich waters, fatally shooting the captain and wounding two
crew members. Honduras' navy commander soon charged that the
fishermen were unjustifiably attacked.
(AP, 1/12/11)
2011 Jan 7, In northern Mexico
authorities found a bullet-ridden body that matches the description
of Saul Vara Rivera (48), the mayor Zaragoza, a town near the Texas
border, who disappeared two days earlier. The body was found in the
neighboring state of Nuevo Leon.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, In Niger two French
citizens, Antoine de Leocour and Vincent Delory, were kidnapped by
four armed men while dining at a restaurant in the capital, Niamey.
It was later reported that Leocour was shot dead by his captives
during a French rescue attempt and that Delory died in a vehicle
carrying fuel after it was hit by weapons fire during the rescue
attempt.
(www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/09/french-hostages-killed-niger)(AFP,
1/5/12)
2011 Jan 7, In Nigeria's
southern delta gunmen opened fire on a ceremony welcoming Timi
Alaibe, a former presidential adviser on the region, back home in
Bayelsa state. 2 people were killed and 6 others wounded, but Alaibe
was not hurt. In central Nigeria Christian youths attacked a car
full of Muslims returning from a wedding, killing seven people
inside the vehicle and sparking retaliatory violence in Jos that
left one other person dead. Gunmen opened fire at an open-air tavern
in northeastern Nigeria, killing six people in Gombe.
(AP, 1/8/11)(AFP, 1/9/11)
2011 Jan 7, A UN report said
over 400 children have died in northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state due
to lead poisoning related to mining a processing gold ore.
(SFC, 1/8/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 7, Pakistan's ruling
party avoided the collapse of its government after its reversal of
unpopular economic reforms helped persuade a key ally not to defect
to the opposition. But the economic concessions could cost Islamabad
billions in international loans badly needed to stabilize its shaky
economy.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, A Russia fishing
vessel with about a dozen on board went missing off Russia's Pacific
coast after sending a distress signal that it was sinking.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, South African
authorities said at least 39 people have died in flooding and
thunderstorms in the eastern part of the country since mid-December.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 7, In western
Venezuela a 10-year-old girl survived a plane crash that killed the
five other people on board, apparently her family members.
(AP, 1/8/11)
2011 Jan 7, In Yemen suspected
al-Qaida fighters killed at least 17 Yemeni soldiers in a pair of
ambushes in the country's restive south.
(AP, 1/7/11)

2012 Jan 7, In Florida Sami
Osmakac (25), a Kosovo-born US citizen, was arrested and charged
with plotting to attack Tampa-area nightclubs and sheriff’s office
to avenge wrongs done to Muslims.
(SFC, 1/10/12, p.A5)
2012 Jan 7, In Montana teacher
Sherry Arnold (43) disappeared after she left her house for a run.
She was pronounced dead on Jan 13. The FBI held 2 men from Colorado
in custody.
(SFC, 1/13/12, p.A6)(SFC, 1/17/12, p.A5)
2012 Jan 7, In Bahrain
anti-government protesters converged on the headquarters of the main
opposition party, defying a government ban on the gathering and
pressing ahead with their campaign for greater political and civil
rights for the nation's Shiite Muslims.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, British developers
said they are planning to create a luxury holiday resort in rural
Wales designed specifically for Chinese tourists, with the aim of
bringing 20,000 to the country each year.
(AFP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, The Danish navy
captured a suspect pirate mothership off the Horn of Africa. They
arrested 25 suspected pirates and freed 14 people from Iran and
Pakistan.
(AP, 1/8/12)
2012 Jan 7, Egypt's two main
Islamist parties claimed to have together taken 62.2 percent of the
vote in the final stage of a general election, maintaining their
lead in the overall contest.
(AFP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, Fiji’s military
rulers officially lifted a state of martial law in place since 2009.
(SSFC, 1/8/12, p.A6)
2012 Jan 7, In Gambia Mamadou
Jallow, a reporter with the privately owned The Daily News, was
arrested. 3 days later he was charged with defaming a local chief in
the Central River Region. Jallow had interviewed local farmers who
accused chief Mamadou Lamin Baldeh of mismanaging public assets.
(AFP, 1/11/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Germany a few
hundred protesters gathered outside the president's palace in Berlin
to call for President Christian Wulff to quit amid a scandal
involving a loan and a furious call to a newspaper.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Iraq a roadside
bomb targeting Shiite pilgrims killed two people and wounded eight
others south of Baghdad. In Basra about 400 people staged a protest
to denounce a decision by Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to
shelter the country's top Sunni politician after an arrest warrant
was issued against him.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, Mexico’s President
Felipe Calderon led the lighting of a soaring independence monument,
"The Pillar of Light," that was supposed to be ready for the 2010
bicentennial, but came in nearly 1½ years late and way over budget.
The quartz-clad light tower has been dubbed "the monument to
corruption." Costs nearly tripled from about 400 million pesos to
more than 1 billion (equivalent at current rates to about $75
million).
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, Northern Mexico
police found five severed human heads in the last 24 hours at
several points around the city of Torreon accompanied by threatening
message referring to drug gangs.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, In New Zealand a
hot air balloon burst into flames and crashed after hitting a power
line, killing all 11 people on board as their families watched on in
horror.
(AFP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, Nigeria’s Pres.
Goodluck Jonathan said he has ordered travel by political office
holders be cut "to the barest minimum." He also said he has cut
political office holders' salaries in the executive branch by 25
percent for 2012. In the northeast suspected gunmen of a radical
Muslim sect, killed three people on an attack on a tea shop in Biu,
Borno state. Boko Haram gunmen also shot and killed two Christian
students who attend the University of Maiduguri.
(AP, 1/7/12)(AP, 1/8/12)
2012 Jan 7, Pakistani police
killed Yaseen Shah, a local Taliban commander, and arrested his
associate after a shootout in Karachi.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, Pakistan freed 179
Indian fishermen who were imprisoned for violating territorial
waters.
(AFP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Somalia the
Alhidaya mosque in Mogadishu was hit during an attack by the
Islamist Shebab insurgents on African Union Mission (AMISOM)
soldiers. At least one Muslim cleric was killed and several other
people wounded.
(AFP, 1/9/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Spain tens of
thousands of protesters filled the streets of Bilbao to call for an
amnesty that would allow some 700 ETA prisoners to serve out the
remainder of their sentences in the Basque region.
(SSFC, 1/8/12, p.A6)
2012 Jan 7, In Spain Dartmouth
College student Crispin Scott was found dead in Barcelona. Police on
February 7 detained a suspect.
(AP, 2/13/12)
2012 Jan 7, Sri Lanka media
said a moratorium on killing stray dogs has been lifted as the
government attempts to cut down on the 2,000 people that are
hospitalized every day after being bitten.
(AFP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Sudan aerial
bombing reportedly left 16 villagers and five government troops dead
near the South Sudanese frontier. Rebels later said more bombing the
next day around Al-Buram killed another seven civilians.
(AFP, 1/14/12)
2012 Jan 7, In Syria troops
attacked a sit-in in the restive central city of Homs, during which
at least one person was killed. The British-based Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights said security forces killed six other people.
(AP, 1/7/12)
2012 Jan 7, In northern Tunisia
Daoud Bouhli (50), a man with a history of mental illness, set
himself on fire, two days after a similar case in the south.
(AP, 1/7/12)

2013 Jan 7, President Obama
nominated former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for secretary of Defense
and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to head the Central
Intelligence Agency.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, Bank of America
said it will spend more than $10 billion to settle mortgage claims
resulting from the housing meltdown.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, The 752-foot
Overseas Reymar rammed a SF Bay Bridge tower as it headed out to
sea. The bridge sustained minor damage but remained opened
immediately after the accident.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, The Oakland Museum
of California was robbed of a gold-and-quartz jewelry box. It dated
to 1869-1878 and was valued at $805,000. The museum had just lost a
pistol and gold nuggets in a robbery on Nov 12. Parolee Andre Taray
Franklin (45) was arrested on March 3. Police recovered the jewelry
box but not the other items. On Jan 3, 2014, Franklin was sentenced
to four years in prison.
(SFC, 2/6/13, p.A6)(SFC, 6/5/14, p.D2)
2013 Jan 7, In Chicago Cedric
Chatman (17) was fatally shot by police after running from police
following a suspected car-jacking. In 2016 the city’s law department
recommended a $3 million settlement with Chatman’s family.
(http://tinyurl.com/jkcqqq6)(SFC, 12/10/16, p.A8)
2013 Jan 7, Richard Ben Cramer
(b.1950), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, died in Baltimore. His
narrative non-fiction spanned presidential politics and baseball.
(SFC, 1/9/13, p.A4)
2013 Jan 7, In New York City
Rodney Alcala, a convicted serial killer from southern California,
was sentenced to an additional 25 years in prison after pleading
guilty to murdering Cornelia Crilley and Ellen Hover in NYC in the
1970s.
(SFC, 1/8/13, p.A5)
2013 Jan 7, In Oklahoma 4 young
women were found shot to death in a Tulsa apartment.
(SFC, 1/8/13, p.A5)
2013 Jan 7, Fred Turner (80),
former CEO and chairman of McDonald’s Corp., died. He introduced the
first Drive-Thru in 1975.
(Econ, 1/26/13, p.82)
2013 Jan 7, An Afghan soldier
turned his weapon against foreign and Afghan troops in a southern
province, killing one British soldier. 6 British soldiers were also
reported wounded.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, In Australia
officials searched for bodies among the charred ruins of more than
100 homes and other buildings destroyed by wildfires in the island
state of Tasmania. Around 100 residents remained unaccounted for,
three days after the fires broke out.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, A Cameroon court
overturned the conviction of two men who were sentenced for five
years in prison for "looking gay" and ordering Bailey's Irish Cream.
The two men had already spent more than a year in jail where they
were subjected to abuse from guards and other prisoners.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, An island doctor
said Cuba is eliminating longstanding restrictions on health care
professionals' overseas travel as part of a broader migration reform
that takes effect next week.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, John Dramani Mahama
became president of Ghana, sworn in as the opposition continues to
dispute election results in one of West African's most stable
democracies.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, In Italy former
Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced a deal with the Northern League,
his fractious coalition partner in three governments, to jointly run
in Italy's election next month.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, Kuwait's
pro-government Al Watan newspaper reported that Ayyad al-Harbi, a
journalist at news website Sabr, was charged with posting Twitter
messages considered offensive to the nation's Western-allied emir
and that he was sentenced to two years in prison for the posts.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, Mexican
authorities said wild dogs mauled and killed four people whose
bodies were found over the past two weeks in a park on the edge of
Mexico City.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, The Dutch military
shipped Patriot missiles to Turkey, a fellow NATO member, after the
alliance agreed in December to deploy the anti-missile systems along
Turkey's southern border with Syria. Fighting in Syria continued
unabated.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 7, Northern Ireland
police came under attack for a fifth straight night as the
province's police chief urged politicians and parents to act to halt
the riots on Belfast streets.
(Reuters, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, In Senegal a man in
front of the gates to the palace in Dakar doused in flammable liquid
and then lit the fire. He was later taken to a hospital where he
died of his injuries.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, In South Africa a
Johannesburg hotel manager discovered the body of American movie
director David R. Ellis (60). Police said Ellis, who directed the
movie "Snakes on a Plane," was last seen Jan 5 in a restaurant by a
friend.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, In Tunisia Ali
Harzi (26), a man linked by officials to the attack on the US
consulate in Benghazi, was conditionally released by a Tunisian
judge due to lack of evidence.
(AP, 1/8/13)
2013 Jan 7, In northern Turkey
a gas leak inside a coal mine killed five workers and injured one.
Two other miners are missing and feared dead in Zonguldak province.
(AP, 1/7/13)

2014 Jan 7, The IRS said it is
seeing a big jump in thieves stealing Social Security numbers to
fraudulently claim US tax returns.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A5)
2014 Jan 7, JPMorgan reached an
accord with the US Justice Dept. and will pay $2.6 billion to
resolve criminal and civil allegations that it failed to stop
Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
(SFC, 1/8/14, p.C5)
2014 Jan 7, The United States
put to death its first inmate of the year in Florida, after a drop
in executions during 2013. Askari Abdullah Muhammad (62), previously
known as Thomas Knight, was convicted of abducting and killing a
Miami couple in 1974 and fatally stabbing a prison guard six years
later using a sharpened spoon. He appealed his conviction numerous
times.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Former NYC police
officers and firefighters were among 106 people indicted over a
massive disability fraud worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The
scheme was estimated to date back to 1988 with some connected to the
September 11, 2001, attacks.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(Econ, 1/11/14, p.26)
2014 Jan 7, A blast of
bone-chilling cold snarled air travel, closed schools and prompted
calls for people to stay inside in the United States and Canada, as
temperatures plunged to lows not seen in two decades. At least 9
people were reported dead due to the weather.
(AFP, 1/7/14)(Reuters, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In eastern England
HH-60G Pave Hawk chopper, based at the US-run Lakenheath air base,
crashed at a nearby nature reserve in Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk,
while flying low on night time training exercise. 4 airmen were
killed. Investigators later reported that the chopper had flown into
flock of geese likely startled by its noise.
(AFP, 1/8/14)(AP, 7/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Cambodia tens of
thousands of garment workers returned to work, ending a two-week pay
dispute after authorities used deadly force to quell a strike and
thwart a protest by their political allies seeking a re-run of a
July election. An estimated 65-70% returned to work.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Canada a freight
train carrying crude oil and propane derailed in New Brunswick
province. One locomotive and 17 cars derailed. 5 cars carried oil
and 4 carried propane.
(AP, 1/8/14)(SFC, 1/9/14, p.A2)
2014 Jan 7, A Chinese
icebreaker and a Russian research vessel -- broke free from thick
Antarctic ice where they had been trapped for days.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Greek Government
officials said a strict review would be made of how those convicted
of terrorism and other severe crimes are granted leave from prison.
A day earlier Christodoulos Xiros (55) failed to make an obligatory
daily appearance at a police station. He was convicted in 2003,
along with two of his brothers, of belonging to the November 17
group and had served 10 years of his term for involvement in a
string of shootings and bombings.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Hong Kong movie and
TV mogul Run Run Shaw (b.1907) died. He had built an empire that
nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John
Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and
produced the sci-fi classic "Blade Runner" (1982).
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Iraq efforts to
retake Ramadi left 4 civilians dead and 14 wounded. Missile strikes
outside Ramadi killed 25 militants. Troops delayed an assault on
Fallujah as fierce clashes erupted between government special forces
and al-Qaida-linked militants outside the city.
(AFP, 1/7/14)(SFC, 1/8/14, p.A3)
2014 Jan 7, In Israel thousands
of African asylum seekers demonstrated in Tel Aviv for a third
straight day of protests against immigration policies.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Myanmar dozens
of journalists staged a rare demonstration in Yangon to protest a
jail term given to a reporter who was working on a story about
corruption.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Nigeria gunmen
shouting "God is great" fired into a mosque in Kwankwaso village,
Kano state. 3 people were killed and 12 wounded.
(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 7, Russia launched the
largest security operation in Olympic history with one month to go
before Vladimir Putin kicks off the Winter Games in Sochi amid
renewed fears of suicide bombings.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, South African
authorities revealed that a phosphate mine spillage, into a
tributary of the Olifants River in late December, has killed
thousands of fish and caused "extensive pollution" to the river in
the country's famed Kruger National Park.
(AFP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, South Sudanese
rebels and a government delegation started face-to-face peace talks
in Ethiopia to try to end fighting that has left the world's newest
state on the brink of civil war.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Princess Cristina
(48), the younger daughter of Spain's King Juan Carlos, was charged
with tax fraud and money-laundering.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Syria's Information
Minister said the Syrian people have decided President Bashar
al-Assad should be nominated for another term and would pressure him
to stand in elections this year.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Syria moved the
first batch of chemical weapon materials out of the country after
transporting it from two sites to the port city of Latakia and onto
a Danish vessel.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Syria Abu
Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front,
called for a ceasefire between opposition factions who have clashed
for five days in the bloodiest episode of infighting since the
revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began. A suicide car
bombing by al-Qaida-linked ISIL fighters killed at least 20 rebels
near the northern city of Darkoush. 3 staff members of Prague-based
"People in Need" were killed in a mortar attack.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)(AP, 1/8/14)(AFP, 1/9/14)
2014 Jan 7, In Thailand
protesters trying to topple PM Shinawatra marched in Bangkok to drum
up support for their plans to bring the capital to a halt next week
by blockading major roads and preventing the government from
functioning.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, Turkish PM Tayyip
Erdogan's government purged hundreds of police officers overnight,
as part of a crackdown on a rival he accuses of trying to usurp
state power by tarring him with a specious corruption investigation.
Despite the dismissals police and prosecutors continued arrests,
targeting the state railway company and a western port. Police
detained some 25 people in the city of Izmir for questioning over a
new bribery and fraud investigation.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)(AP, 1/8/14)
2014 Jan 7, Turkey’s Anadolu
state news said military prosecutors have dropped a case against
five officers who were being investigated for negligence in the
military air strike on Dec 11, 2011, that killed 34 smugglers
mistaken for Kurdish rebels, saying there was no ground for any
legal action.
(AP, 1/7/14)
2014 Jan 7, In eastern Yemen
tribesmen Hadramawt province blew up an oil pipeline for the second
time in two days, disrupting an important source of revenue for the
impoverished state. Gunmen shot dead an army colonel and a car bomb
injured a senior intelligence officer in Aden.
(Reuters, 1/7/14)

2015 Jan 7, In California US
District Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that the state prohibition on
the sale of foie gras illegally encroached upon the regulatory
domain of the federal government. The state ban was passed in 2004
and went into effect in 2012.
(SFC, 1/8/15, p.A1)
2015 Jan 7, In North Dakota a
leak from a saltwater collection line owned by Summit Midstream
Partners LP was reported to state officials. Nearly 3 million
gallons of saltwater, a byproduct of the hydraulic fracturing
process, and an unknown quantity of crude oil had leaked from a
pipeline into a creek that feeds the Missouri River approximately 15
miles north of Williston.
(AP, 1/22/15)
2015 Jan 7, In Pennsylvania a 2
people died in an 18-vehicle crash on I-80 after a snow squall left
drivers with little visibility.
(SFC, 1/9/15, p.A6)
2015 Jan 7, In Afghanistan a
bomb blast killed Judge Mohammad-ul Hassan and wounded two of his
daughters in Jalalabad. Insurgents killed 6 people working on a road
project, including the head of a construction company, in northern
Baghlan province.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, In Bangladesh 2
people were shot dead when police and armed protesters began firing
in the southern district of Noakhali. An auto-rickshaw passenger was
attacked and killed by anti-government protesters in the central
district of Sirajganj.
(AP, 1/8/15)
2015 Jan 7, Cuba freed three
detainees, as Havana began to release 53 people the United States
considers political prisoners.
(Reuters, 1/8/15)
2015 Jan 7, French writer’s
Michel Houellebecq “Soumission" was published. It depicted a near
future (2022) in which Islamists win France’s presidency and
compromise its freedoms.
(Econ, 1/10/15, p.7)(Econ, 1/10/15, p.46)
2015 Jan 7, In France heavily
armed gunmen shouting Islamist slogans stormed a Paris office of
satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and shot dead 10 staff and 2
police officers in the deadliest attack in France in four decades.
The masked attackers reportedly hijacked a car and sped off. Al
Qaeda in Yemen later claimed responsibility for the attack.
Cartoonist Stephane Charbonnier (47) was among those killed.
(AFP, 1/7/15)(AP, 1/7/15)(Reuters, 1/14/15)(Econ,
1/10/15, p.45)(Econ, 1/17/15, p.90)
2015 Jan 7, In India around
half a million coal workers vowed to continue their strike after
inconclusive talks with the government, possibly jeopardizing power
supplies.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, In southeastern
India a passenger bus veered off a road and fell into a gorge,
killing at least 11 people in Andhra Pradesh state.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, Indonesia's search
and rescue agency said the tail of the Dec 28 crashed AirAsia jet
Flight QZ8501 has been found on the sea bed about 30 km (20 miles)
from the plane's last known location. Forty bodies and debris from
the plane have been plucked from the surface of the waters off
Borneo.
(Reuters, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, Iran's official
IRNA news agency said the judiciary has ordered that LINE, WhatsApp
and Tango, three popular apps providing free phone and messaging
services, be shut down. Social websites including YouTube, Twitter
and Facebook have already been blocked by censors.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, In Mexico Julio
Scherer Garcia (88), founder of the newsmagazine Proceso and one of
the most influential Mexican journalists of the past half century,
died.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, Nepal said it will
issue passports to sexual minorities, adding a third gender category
in a sign of the conservative Hindu-majority country becoming more
liberal since the end of a decade-long civil war.
(Reuters, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, It was announced
that Royal Dutch Shell will pay more than $80 million to people in
Bodo, a Nigerian fishing community "devastated" by two serious oil
spills in 2008. The clean-up could take years.
(AFP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, In Pakistan the
bullet-riddled body of Abid Mehmood (52), a Muslim man arrested for
blasphemy, was found in Taxila, a town about 40 km from Islamabad,
after being released from jail.
(AP, 1/8/15)
2015 Jan 7, Tadeusz Konwicki
(b.1926), a prominent Polish writer and filmmaker, died in Warsaw.
His works during the communist era lampooned the authoritarian
Soviet-imposed system. He was best known for his novels "A
Minor Apocalypse," a satire of life in a totalitarian state, and
"The Polish Complex," a polemic on a national historical condition
tragically defined by military defeats and foreign occupation.
(AP, 1/8/15)
2015 Jan 7, Puntland area
regional President Abdiweli Mohamed said 20 al Shabaab rebels and
five soldiers have been killed in fighting in the past week in the
Galgala hills. Al Shabaab's military spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu
Musab, said the group had killed 23 soldiers in three days of
clashes and that fighting was continuing.
(Reuters, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, Ugandan army
spokesman Paddy Ankunda said top LRA commander Dominic Ongwen, who
is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes
against humanity and war crimes, has given himself up in Central
African Republic. He was initially abducted by the LRA when he was a
10-year-old and forced to fight as a child soldier.
(AP, 1/7/15)
2015 Jan 7, Vietnamese police
detained lawmaker Chau Thi Thu Nga (49) for alleged fraud involving
a housing project.
(AP, 1/8/15)
2015 Jan 7, In Yemen a car bomb
blast tore through dozens of new students lined up at a police
academy in Sanaa, killing at least 35 people.
(AP, 1/7/15)(Reuters, 1/7/15)

2016 Jan 7, The US government
released its 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. For the first
time it set specific limits on sugar intake.
(AP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, The US-led
coalition launched 23 air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and
three in Syria.
(Reuters, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, The United States
donated 24 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles to Nigeria's
military, to enable the country's soldiers to combat Boko Haram
Islamic insurgents who continued cutting a bloody path through the
northeast.
(AP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, In California a
criminal complaint was unsealed accusing Iraqi refugee Aws Mohammed
Younis Al-Jayab (23) of Sacramento, of traveling to Syria to fight
and lying to investigators about it.
(AP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, In Philadelphia
policeman Jesse Hartnett (33) was shot three times in his left arm
as he sat in his patrol car late today. Edward Archer (30), claiming
allegiance to the Islamic State extremist group, opened fire
multiple times at point-blank range with a stolen police gun before
he was arrested.
(AFP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, Burkina Faso's
Pres. Faso Roch Marc Christian Kabore named economist Paul Kaba
Thieba (56) as prime minister.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, China’s top
securities regulator said it will suspend "circuit breakers" after
trading curbs were again triggered when share prices tumbled more
than seven percent, halting share trading early for the second time
this week. The circuit breaker suspension would come into effect on
Jan 8.
(AFP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Chinese authorities
said 11 workers trapped underground in a coal mine collapse have
died in Shaanxi province.
(AP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, In eastern Congo
DRC Rwandan Hutu rebels killed 14 civilians from a rival ethnic
group and wounded nine in the town of Lubero in North Kivu province.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, In France Salim
Benghalem (35), a key French member of the Islamic State group, was
sentenced in absentia by a Paris court to 15 years in prison. He had
ties to the Charlie Hebdo attackers. Six other men, who have
returned from Syria and Iraq, were given sentences of between six
and nine years.
(AFP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Paris police shot
dead a man wielding a knife after he tried to enter a police station
shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) and wearing what turned out
to be a fake suicide belt.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Guyana authorities
said the US government is assisting in a crackdown on a massive
int’l. gold smuggling operation. Guyana estimated that some 15,000
troy ounces of raw gold are smuggled out of the country each week.
(SFC, 1/8/16, p.A2)
2016 Jan 7, In India Mufti
Mohammed Sayeed (79), a top elected pro-India leader of Kashmir,
died in a New Delhi hospital of pneumonia. He tried to win over
insurgent groups in the troubled region.
(AP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Indonesia signed a
$1.3 billion deal with South Korea to jointly develop Seoul's
next-generation fighter jets.
(AFP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Iran and Saudi
Arabia took further steps to sever commercial ties, intensifying a
feud between the regional rivals, as Tehran announced a ban on
imports from Saudi Arabia and Saudi groups called for boycotts of
Iranian products.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Iran said Saudi
warplanes had attacked its embassy in Yemen's capital, a development
that would exacerbate tensions between the major Shi'ite and Sunni
powers in the region, and Riyadh said it would investigate the
accusation. Residents said an air strike had hit a public square
about 700 meters (yards) away from the embassy and that some stones
and shrapnel had landed in the embassy's yard.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, In Iraq clashes
between a joint Turkish-Iraqi force and Islamic State militants near
the Bashiqa camp training camp outside the city of Mosul reportedly
left at least 18 IS fighters dead. The commander of the training
camp, Maj Gen. Mohammed Yahya, said there were no such clashes.
(AP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, In Libya at least
60 people were killed when a bomb attack hit a police training
center as hundreds of recruits gathered for a morning meeting in
Zliten.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)(SFC, 1/8/16, p.A3)
2016 Jan 7, Poland's President
Andrzej Duda signed a temporary new law that's a step toward giving
the government full control of state radio and television. It will
expire June 30. By then, a sweeping new law intended to overhaul the
state-run broadcasters and the PAP news agency was expected to be in
place.
(AP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, Puerto Rico faced
its first lawsuit over how the US territory's government has
diverted funds to meet certain bond payments as its liquidity
dwindles amid a worsening economic crisis.
(AP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, In Saudi Arabia 3
civilians including a child were killed by shelling in the Jazan
region from Yemen.
(AFP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, Somalia cut
diplomatic ties with Iran and ordered all Iranian diplomats and
embassy staff out of the country within 72 hours.
(AP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, South Africa's
financial hub Johannesburg hit a record temperature of 38 degrees
Celsius, as a drought persisted in Africa's largest producer of
maize.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, South Korea
announced it would resume cross-border propaganda broadcasts that
Pyongyang considers an act of war In response to North Korea's
latest nuclear test.
(AP, 1/7/16)
2016 Jan 7, A
Swedish-registered freight jet crashed in a mountainous area near
the Norwegian border. Two crew members from Spain and France were
feared dead.
(AP, 1/8/16)
2016 Jan 7, In Yemen dozens of
air strikes hit Sanaa, in what residents described as the heaviest
aerial attacks yet in nine months of war.
(Reuters, 1/7/16)

2017 Jan 7, US Pres.-elect
Donald Trump called for a closer relationship between the US and
Russia.
(SSFC, 1/8/17, p.A7)
2017 Jan 7, Oliver Schmidt, a
former Volkswagen US executive and champion of "clean diesel," was
arrested in Florida. He headed VW's US Energy and Environmental
Office in 2014 and 2015 before returning to live in Germany. He was
charged with defrauding the United States in the cover up cheating
of US emissions tests.
(Reuters, 1/9/17)
2017 Jan 7, Beijing announced
that China's foreign exchange reserves fell by $320 billion last
year, as authorities sought to support the yuan against a soaring
dollar which is encouraging capital outflows.
(AFP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, Heavy snowfall and
below-freezing temperatures continued to sweep across the European
continent causing more than a dozen deaths. In Poland two men died
of cold, bringing the nation's death toll from winter weather to 55
since Nov 1.
(AP, 1/7/17)(AP, 1/8/17)
2017 Jan 7, Ghana's new
President Nana Akufo-Addo (72) pledged to cut taxes to boost the
economy at his swearing in ceremony, whilst also promising to
protect the public purse by getting value for money on services.
(Reuters, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, Iraqi government
troops made fresh progress in their push against IS inside the
northern city of Mosul, dislodging militants from new areas and for
the first time reaching the nearest point to Tigris river that
divides the city since the operation began in mid-October.
(AP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, In Ivory Coast
gunfire broke out at a military base in Abidjan, as unrest triggered
by soldiers demanding wage increases and bonuses appeared to spread.
(Reuters, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, In Pakistan Samar
Abbas, president of the Civil Progressive Alliance of Pakistan
(CPAP), an anti-extremism activist group, went missing. This was
days after four other campaigners disappeared in a way that has
alarmed supporters of free speech.
(Reuters, 1/11/17)
2017 Jan 7, Philippine security
forces a foreign national and his female companion who were
suspected of being connected to a militant group supporting Islamic
State. The foreigner, believed to be Pakistani, was identified as
Abu Naila.
(Reuters, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, Mario Soares (92),
Portugal's former president (1986-1996), died in Lisbon.
(AFP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, In Saudi Arabia
Taie bin Salem bin Yaslam al-Saya'ari died alongside another
extremist in a shootout with officers in Riyadh, wearing a suicide
bomb vest and clutching a machine gun.
(AP, 1/8/17)
2017 Jan 7, In South Korea
hundreds of thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Seoul
demanding impeached Pres. Park Geun-Hye's immediate removal and the
salvaging of the April 16, 2014, sunken Sewol ferry which left more
than 300 dead.
(AFP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, A South Korean
Buddhist monk (64) set himself on fire to protest the country’s
settlement with Japan on compensation for wartime sex slaves. The
monk suffered third-degree burns.
(SFC, 1/9/17, p.A2)
2017 Jan 7, In Sri Lanka at
least 21 people were injured in violent clashes between government
supporters and villagers marching against what they say is a plan to
take over private land for an industrial zone in which China will
have a major stake.
(AP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, In Syria at least
48 people were killed when a tanker truck bomb ripped through the
center of a busy commercial district of Azaz, a rebel-held town
along the Turkish border.
(AFP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, Turkey ordered the
dismissal of almost 8,400 civil servants and the closure of over 80
associations, including sports clubs, in the latest round of purges
after the July failed coup.
(AFP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, Turkish PM Binali
Yildirim commenced a two-day visit to Iraq, the first since the two
governments quarreled over the presence of unauthorized Turkish
troops in northern Iraq.
(AP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, In Turkey a heavy
snowstorm paralyzed life in Istanbul, with hundreds of flights
cancelled and the Bosporus closed to shipping traffic.
(AFP, 1/7/17)
2017 Jan 7, Yemeni government
forces launched operation "Golden Spear," to drive Huthi rebels from
all of Yemen's Red Sea coast. At least 55 Huthis were killed in
fighting and 72 others wounded. Clashes over the next 24 hours also
killed 13 loyalist forces.
(AFP, 1/8/17)(AFP, 1/9/17)